Dead Letter
by Lady Serpentine
Summary: A long time ago, the Dark Lord took steps to ensure his immortality. Now, long after his defeat, he has placed his hope in Bellatrix; and, incidentally, Severus Snape. Slash. SSRB.
1. The Written Word

**Copyrights where applicable. Storyline is mine. Characters are not. Ideas are mine. The Rasmus is not. Etc, etc, let's think of something better to do other than trying to sue the author, etc, etc, that's the end of that.**

.x.

DEAD LETTER

dedicated to Jessi, who will love this; and VeeTee, who will appreciate it. And, of course, any other fangirl out there who likes Severus/Regulus.

".a dead letter is a.  
.letter that has.  
.never been.  
.delivered because.  
.the person to whom.  
.it was written.  
.cannot be found,.  
.and it also cannot be.  
.returned to the.  
.person who wrote it."  
--_Dead Letters_, The Rasmus

The Written Word

My beloved Bellatrix,

I have one last gift to give to you, to repay all that you have given to me. Never have I been in debt; never do I plan to.

Bella, you have made me come to a realisation, and for that I am and will be forever grateful. To one such as I, who has never been loved, your affection has been… a blessing for which I have a profound appreciation for.

Perhaps I love you, my disciple. Perhaps not. But the end is near; I leave this letter and this token among your possessions before I meet my beginning, and you your renewal.

With a certain key I will have achieved what I have desired, after all these years; the key is you. And so I give you my gift to repay what you have given and what you, and your bloodline, shall give in future. And forever will I pay for what I take, in a never-ending cycle.

You will not understand for many years, until you venture into what is Forbidden, but know this, my Bella. It is thanks to you, and you alone, that I have achieved my immortality.

--Tom

.x.

"So," Alex McDougall was saying, sifting through the contents of a cardboard box. A woman sat across from her, her long black hair twisted into a messy plait. "We have… your Gringotts key, a copy of Mansfield Park, a few sets of robes, your wand…"

Mrs Lestrange listened attentively, her ankles crossed. Very few people had the ability to make a pair of old, snug jeans and a worn out tank top look incredibly attractive, but Lestrange managed it. She had a gaunt, stringy look that suggested that she was quite healthy at one point; but now her beauty was faded, to something similar to that of a model on cocaine.

Alex shuffled through the objects in the box. Quite a few books - Lestrange had placed importance on the written word, it seemed. Alex dislodged a worn copy that had 'Marquis de Sade' stamped along the spine, and raised one of her chestnut eyebrows.

"Gift from the brother-in-law," Lestrange said. "He thought it would be funny. Of course, he was mad as a hatter."

Alex laughed and continued with the inventory. "Alright, well… A boxed set of Beatrix Potter?"

Lestrange hid her surprise. "From when I was a kid." She lied.

"Some more clothes, family jewellery, and a makeup case. And that's it." Alex was surprised. "Not a lot."

"Well, a lot was confiscated and they haven't given it back," Lestrange said, with a bit of a grimace. "They may have been destroyed. Well, I don't… need them, anymore. So it's okay."

Alex wondered; she wondered what had actually been ripped from Lestrange's person as the aurors had closed in. Before treatment, Bellatrix Lestrange had been as mad and murderous as the Dark Lord - the sort of person covered in poisons and murder weapons, and with a hands-on knowledge on how to use them all effectively.

"Well," Alex said, "that will be all. You have somewhere to stay until you get back on your feet?"

"I think so," Lestrange said, standing up. She had a lean, rangy manner, like a starved coyote. "If not, I can take care of myself."

"Okay." Alex leaned over the desk and shook hands with Lestrange. "Perhaps I'll see you some other time. But hopefully not during treatment."

"That would be nice," Lestrange said. And, picking up her box of personal possessions, she left Longbottom's Institute For Special Cases, trying not to break into a dead run.

.x.

She knocked sharply on the door, her thin, hard knuckles rapping on the solid wood. She was in a particularly posh, spacious district, which brought back small moments of nostalgia. Years ago, when she had still been young, and beautiful, she'd walked down these streets in the dead of night, laughing raucously with her companions, back from a party, or perhaps a raid.

Bellatrix Lestrange knocked again. She belonged here more than at her sister's manor; here, in this rich but not extravagant house, with the memories in the walls - and they were good memories, and so were rare.

The door opened and she looked up slightly to see a tall, thin man, whose surprise was quickly overtaken by his habitual acidity. "It's called a doorbell."

"Can I come in?" Bella asked. She had her cardboard box under her arm and balanced on her hip. "I need somewhere to stay. Narcissa said I was always welcome but, you know… I… can I come in?"

He stepped aside and let her enter. "Need help?"

"I've got it," Bella assured him, and went straight past the stairs, through the living room and into the kitchen. He shut the door behind her and followed.

"So they let you out?" He asked, leaning against the kitchen counter. She deposited her box on the table and began to go through its contents.

"Yeah," she muttered. "Just this morning."

Severus Snape had a look on his face that suggested letting Bellatrix out of eyesight, let alone an entire facility, was a grave mistake. "You'd think they'd know by now."

"Excuse me, but the treatment _helped_," Bella protested, looking a little indignant. "Do you see me bursting into uncontrollable laughter? Stabbing things with pointy objects? Forgetting what I was talking about after five minutes of ranting?"

"I can't be sure, you haven't been here for five minutes yet." Severus replied.

Bella bristled. "Don't start with me."

"I've started nothing," Severus said. He was not cowed by her; Severus possessed within him a sort of rigid, dignified sophistication that was utterly immune to such a lowly threat as Bellatrix's flashing eyes. Give him a Dark Lord and he'd be on his knees without thinking, but Bellatrix had nothing to offer. "Would you like some tea?"

"You are crazy." Bella said, calming down somewhat. "It is unfair. They locked me away and let you frolic about frightening small children. Yes. I would like some tea."

Severus looked as if he might roll his eyes, or look to the heavens and ask for help, but Severus controlled himself by habit, so instead he started to boil some water.

"I've got some odd things in here," Bellatrix mused, "And aha, they let me keep _The Mystified Magistrate_."

Severus looked at her expectantly and Bella found herself grudgingly handing the volume over, and watched Severus turn the worn book around in his thin, dextrous hands.

"Lucius gave this to you?"

"Yeah. Nineteenth birthday, remember?"

Severus opened it.

Bella felt a burst of protection enflame her. "Don't read it!" she snapped. "It's.. er… explicit."

Severus looked amused. "Bellatrix, I am forty-five years old, and have been reading for forty-three of them. A book is not going to scar me. Even one by the Marquis de Sade"

"Yeah, well," Bella said, feeling slightly embarrassed. She was a naturally motherly sort; it came from being the eldest of three sisters and two cousins. "It's still such a torrid book."

"I know. I've read it." Severus said rather unblushingly, giving the book back before attending to the tea.

"You've read everything, and you've copies of them to boot," Bella muttered, shifting aside her clothing. "Bet you've got the Kama Sutra."

"It's upstairs."

"And I bet you keep it under your pillow too, you dirty old man."

"Dirty I may be, but at least I'm flexible."

"You know," Bella said, waving _The Tailor of Gloucester _at him, as if brandishing a disciplinary finger, "I can never tell when you're joking or not."

"Why do you have a book by Beatrix Potter?" Severus asked.

Bella looked down at the boxed set, all thirteen books - save for the one she held - arranged in order of publication. It made her a little sad. "I guess, you know, _he_ left them for me."

"The Dark Lord had a set of Beatrix Potter all to himself?"

"Only thing he read as a kid, told me so himself," Bella said, sliding _The Tailor of Gloucester _back into its spot. "I guess it would be, I don't know… _sacrilegious _to throw them out, you know?"

"The Dark Lord was a complicated man." Severus said, setting the tea on the table by the books. It was a complication Severus had never bothered to understand, for his own safety; Bella, however, had pursued it with a passion. "Still, you were his favourite, so he would rather you keep it."

"I know." Bella said. Then she dug deep down into the box and unearthed a set of black robes.

They were unlike normal robes in the sense that they were not styled to any fashion, old or current, nor were they plain; they were cut strangely, so as to flow easily in certain parts and restrict in others, and the cuff designs were simple, triangular, done in blacker silk thread. They were undoubtedly finely made, if a bit wrinkled, and there was a bolt of cloth stuffed haphazardly into the hood.

Severus looked tense. "Put those away."

"Oh, they must not have _seen _these," Bella breathed. An expression of delight and nostalgia suffused her angular face as she rubbed the soft, whispery fabric against her cheek. "Why else would they let me keep them? They must look like any other robes all folded up…"

"Put them away, Bella," Severus demanded again, in a slightly strained voice. Bellatrix shot him a look, angry at him interrupting her moment, and went back to admiring the clothing, laying it down flat on the table and spreading it flat with the lightness of a mother's touch. She then pulled out the wrinkled piece of cloth stuffed in the hood and flattened it out between her hands; when tied about her head the material, unblemished except for two eye slits, covered her the top of her face but divided at the nose, trailing down on either side of her cheek into two points.

She wanted to put it on; she wanted to slide the robes over her head and tie on the mask, and maybe for a second - just one, glimmering second - she'd feel like herself again, without the medications and the therapy and the imprisonment, and the doctors who asked her prodding questions and diagnosed her as stark raving mad.

Then Severus was there, pulling the material out of her grasp and carefully folding it up. "You don't belong in these anymore." he said quietly. "That age has passed."

"Where's your set?" She asked, a little dazedly.

"I put it under a copy of the Holy Bible. That way I'll never have need to uncover them."

"Very amusing," Bella said dryly. She smoothed the robes along the tabletop again; her forehead wrinkled a little when her palm ran over a bump.

Severus was back to reading _The Mystified Magistrate_, so Bella didn't have an audience when she pulled out a somewhat crumpled piece of paper from the pocket of her Death Eater robes. It wasn't on parchment, nor was it written with a quill; it was merely a piece of lined paper, the sort torn out of a cheap notebook, and the note within was penned hastily in blue ink.

But even without the sharp, swooping lines of quill and calligraphy, Bellatrix easily recognised the writing of that of the Dark Lord. The style depended largely on Voldemort's mood - slow and soft when he was at ease, sharp and pointed when angry - but no matter what, his letters were usually cramped, and the spaces between words larger than usual.

And he signed it with _Tom_.

It didn't take long for her to read it all; once she was done her hand started to spasm, and she almost crushed the fragile paper between her long, bony fingers.

Token…

Strangely, Bellatrix didn't feel nervous, or uneasy, or overjoyed. She felt an excited satisfaction. She could still hear Andromeda's voice in her ear, warning her. _Don't throw your life away. Don't follow when you can lead. Don't give it all away_.

Andromeda had always tried to control her older sister; to tell her what was right or wrong. But Bella saw the world with crystalline clarity, and her mind was sharp and her wits were quick, and when she believed in Lord Voldemort, she had been the strongest believer of all.

Now what had he left her in return…?

She drew from the pocket of her long unused robes, robes that had inspired such fear and respect and hatred in the common man, a ring.

It was quite a large piece of jewellery, and thick, and heavy with gold. It was stamped with a complicated design that was wearing away, and had the grubby look of an object long buried. Her blunt nail pushed away the dirt caked into the grooves of the design, and a scratched-looking _toujurs pur _glinted dully in the afternoon sunlight.

"Severus," she said. He made no notice, too embroiled in the book. She ran the pad of her thumb thoughtfully along the silver band, and picked more dirt out of it.

_I have one last gift to give to you…_

"Severus," she said again, sharply this time. He looked up, faintly annoyed, as she shoved the ring under his hooked nose.

"Recognise this?" she demanded.

"I can't see it, you idiot," he snapped back, and seized her wrist with one hand and forced it back so he could give the ring a proper look.

He paled.

"Where the hell did you get that?" he growled.

"My pocket," she said numbly, and pointed at the tabletop. "It was… in my pocket."

"It's not his," Severus said sharply.

"It is," Bellatrix insisted, "I recognise it. He got it for Christmas the year after Sirius left. It was our Grandfather's."

Severus looked like he was about to protest, but she grabbed the note and forced it roughly into his face, and said in an unnaturally high voice, desperate to convince him, "There's no other explanation."

Severus looked angry. It wasn't the angry look he had always given her when they disagreed; it was a look of offended disbelief, an expression that clearly stated 'I don't know why you're doing this to me, but it's pissing me off.'

"Read the note," Bellatrix demanded.

"Why the hell would I want to read a goddamned note?" Severus spat.

"Read it!"

"Go to hell."

"I'm your superior!"

"Not anymore."

"Severus," Bella said, starting to become seriously irritated, "Read. The fucking. Note."

He stared at her.

Something in her head clicked, as she stared into those depthless eyes. Something long buried; an heirloom from her teenage years, when she had drifted through the student body and commanded - _controlled _- every aspect of it.

Bellatrix's mouth twisted in a parody of a grin. "You _want _to read it," she whispered.

Severus frowned slightly.

"You do," Bellatrix murmured smugly, her eyes glinting a little. "It's in your nature. You're curious. You'll never admit it, but you are. You have to _know _things; all you ever wanted in life was knowledge, and you seek it without care of the consequences. You _want _to read this note. Go ahead. _Take it_."

"They claimed you were sane, did they?" Severus breathed, eyes slightly narrowed. "Were they fools, Bellatrix? I think they were; nothing and no one can cure you, and they'll never take away your _twisted _way of seeing things, or the nature in which you think, or the way you smile like that…"

"Take the note," Bellatrix said.

There was a pause.

Then he took it.

Her smile was calmer this time. "It's not very long," she said.

Severus was a quicker reader than she was; he raised his black eyes to her shortly and said, as if it were plain to see, "It's a trick."

"No," Bella said. "It's really a note from him."

Severus looked like he was about to roll his eyes again. "I didn't say it wasn't. I said it was a trick."

Bellatrix glowered. "How?"

"He foresaw his doom and took steps for another resurrection. And he wants you to set events in motion. Obviously."

She frowned. Then, decisively, tore the note away from him before he decided to do away with it. Severus was like that. "He wouldn't do that to me!" She snarled, incredibly offended. _I was his only heir and he would never, ever trick me…_

"He would," Severus said.

"No." She growled, looking more and more like an angry cat as the seconds ticked by. "No. This… he's alive…"

"Regulus is dead." Severus said.

There was a silence. Severus didn't like to say the name; loathed hearing it from another's lips. So he stood there for a moment, trying to block the feelings the name inspired out, while Bella battled with herself not to strike him.

"He's not," Bella insisted quietly. "He's not dead. The Dark Lord left him for me, and I am going to go get him, and you will come with me."

"Perhaps he _is _alive, then?" Severus growled. "what next? You trigger the Third Rise? You bring back to life the largest homicidal maniac to ever come from England?"

"Personally, I think Lucius was a tad more… homicidal…"

"Bellatrix," Severus said, "Stop thinking of the Cause. It's over. The Dark Lord _himself _knew it was over. No one will accept his ideas. No one is left to rally under his banner. And nobody else will."

"It's not just about the Master," she snapped. "This is about my little cousin, Severus."

"And he's dead."

"_No_."

"He is."

"Prove it!" Bella yelled, looking somewhat hysterical. "Come with me. I know who can tell me where to go, he told me, so come with me and prove he's dead."

"I am not going to help you raise the Dark Lord," Severus hissed, eyes flashing dangerously. He was wrapped around many fingers, but not Bellatrix's; so in her hysteria, in her desperation, she played her final card, and hit him where it hurt.

"Then you never loved us," she said. "Not one of us. You never loved me, and you never loved my sisters, and you never loved the ones who protected you when no one else would. You never loved Regulus. You never loved us, or anyone, and so goodbye. I'll get Regulus back myself."

And she turned on her heel and stormed out of the kitchen, heading towards the front door.


	2. Dynamics

**I'm sorry Bellatrix is such a freak.**

**She's not sorry, though.**

**Same copyrights apply.**

Dynamics

Lucius Malfoy had been, in his own way, a somewhat legendary figure. He had been a man of power, and control, and utter sophistication - the sort of man who had dozens clamouring to his beck and call.

And yet despite it all, even Lucius Malfoy could never deny his best friend; soft, womanly Bellatrix, with her alien eyes and crooked grin. Bellatrix, who, if ever those eyes shone with need, and heartbreak, Lucius would drop everything and dash to her side and try in vain to make it all better. Not even the Dark Lord so had Lucius under his sway, for the Dark Lord was, and never could be, what Bellatrix was to Lucius.

Severus had remarked on it, once. "One of these days I'll be gone, and _you'll _be the one she goes to," Lucius had replied, somewhat irritably. "And when that happens, you'll do _anything _to make her happy. Now shut up and pass the scotch."

Severus' hand closed firmly around Bellatrix's wrist, stopping her in her tracks halfway through the living room.

"Tomorrow." He said, annoyed. "We'll go tomorrow."

Bellatrix's face, angular and hardened by life, softened somewhat. "Do you want to know where we're going?"

"Bella," Severus said, looking rather resigned and disgruntled at the same time; he _hated _it when Lucius was right. "I don't think it matters."

.x.

Night time in Severus' household was quite different than night time at Longbottom's Institute. For one thing, there weren't any muffled shouts and the creak of trolleys moving medication, and for another, there was a great, _great _amount of sharp objects hanging on the walls of the room she was staying in, which was Severus' room.

It had been a rather confused arrangement. Severus worked in a manner quite unlike gentlemanly men in romance novels, so Bella had been forced to take up the pen, as it were, and start the topic of Bedding Arrangements.

"Want me to sleep on the couch?" she asked.

"I'll take the couch."

"You're so gentlemanly."

"Actually, no. The couch is more comfortable."

"Are you lying?"

"Would you believe my answer?"

"I want the couch."

"No. You get the bed."

"_You _get the bed."

"No, I get the couch."

"But I don't want the bed. I want the couch."

"How can you not want the bed? It's a bed."

"Does it have a down comforter?"

"Yes."

"Okay, maybe I do want the bed; but I don't want you wanting the couch."

"You cannot stop me wanting the couch. You have no control over my wanting."

"That may be so, but I can stop you _getting _what you want, which is the couch."

"How so?"

"By making you take the bed."

"Then that means you don't get what _you _want, which is the bed."

"But I also want you not to get the couch… so it's halfway."

"Bella, just take the bed."

"I'll take the bed if you take the bed."

"So we both get the bed?"

"Yes."

"But you talk in your sleep."

"So do you."

"Do not."

"I can prove it."

"No you can't."

"Well. Can you prove that _I _talk in my sleep?"

"Well, no. But I could think of a way in roughly seven minutes time."

"Shut up. We both take the bed."

"I won't be able to sleep, with you talking."

"I won't be able to sleep with _you _talking."

"So we shall both sit awake, will we?"

"Precisely."

"I fear inbreeding has fogged your mind."

"Yes," Bella had said, in the middle of trying to make a castle out of playing cards, "That is my fear also."

Severus had knocked it down.

"That was very cruel of you." Bellatrix stated, hiding under the infamous down comforter, clad in simple black robes. They had once fit rather splendidly; that was before she had dropped roughly twenty pounds. "I hadn't been able to make a card castle that tall in ages. It had six levels. _Six levels_, you pompous little slime ball."

"Greasy," Severus corrected. "Not slimy."

"I'm not going to call you a grease ball." Bellatrix said firmly. "That's mean."

"What the hell have they been injecting you with at that treatment centre?" Severus asked. "A sub form of heroin?"

"The only time I get injected with something is when I chew on another patient," Bellatrix said with a sniff, "Oh… and it's an ongoing habit, as a warning. You might wake up without a hand."

Severus made a sound in his throat that could either have been annoyed or amused; Bella wasn't sure which. She peeked over the top of the blanket and watched as Severus, with his back to her, pulled his white, button-up shirt off over his head. There was a splash of colour on his pale, sallow skin, right on his left shoulder blade. It was the souvenir of one rather wild night on the town, which still stood out in Bellatrix's memory as the only time she had ever seen every single one of her mates truly, hopelessly drunk.

"Butterfly," Bellatrix said, and immediately burst into some rather unladylike snickering. Severus didn't seem to mind it.

"At least I don't have Lucius' tattoo," He remarked dryly, sliding into bed. "That one was all over his back."

"But it was a very lovely, artistic tattoo," Bellatrix pointed out, even though it had been more than artistic; it had been a practical plethora of magical symbols. "He did the design himself, didn't he?"

"But it was a wizard tattoo," Severus reminded her. "It's magical. Burns like hell for a week until it truly sets in."

"Ha, now I remember," Bella said, "and we kept hitting him on the back when he didn't expect it! That was great. But you can't escape the fact you have a butterfly on your shoulder."

"It keeps me company." Severus said. "However, at least we had the good sense while inebriated to stop by a Wizarding Parlour. A muggle tattoo would have dampened the whole experience."

"Why?" Bella asked. "Is poor Severus afraid of needles?"

"Of course not," he answered, "but a muggle tattoo is basically ink imbedded in the skin. However, high content of alcohol in the blood spreads the ink, and your tattoo becomes blurry. I'd rather a butterfly than a colourful smear."

"Where do you _get _this information?" Bellatrix asked. "Books? Because that would be really sad."

"I get it from talking to people, of course," Severus said. Bellatrix stared at him.

"Despite the danger of getting stabbed to death by your elbows, can I curl up against you?" she asked suddenly.

He raised an eyebrow. "Why ever for?"

Bellatrix shrugged slightly and twisted the comforter around her fingers. She was a proud woman; not the proud, arrogant sort that wanted everyone to know how great she was, however. She was proud because she was not afraid to admit a weakness, or to be stranger than usual, or to bow before a man she had truly loved, even if he had probably never loved her back.

"At the institute," She said, thoughtfully, "I was always isolated at night. And I didn't like it. I like to know there's someone around, but someone I can trust, but when I was there I didn't have anyone with me, and every night I was reminded and it was depressing. So. Can I?"

Severus sighed a bit. "I suppose so."

"Thank you," she said. Then, after a moment of shifting around, "You're bony. Did you know that?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Just checking."

.x.

Try as she might, Bellatrix couldn't sleep. She spent hours lying next to Severus (who she wasn't entirely certain was sleeping, either), trying to come to terms with her head, and mulling things over.

One of the first things she realised was that Severus smelt strongly of cloves. Then she became aware of textures; the smoothness of the sheets, the slight dampness of her companion's skin. Then, the bigger things concerning her situation; the fact her Lord was dead and she had no idea what on earth she was doing, and her reputation would affect her for the rest of her life, and her best friend was in jail and she had no idea where her husband was. She didn't know how Severus could stand it; having to be the last one standing as friend after friend was brought down, some by his own hand, some not.

Bellatrix was someone who lived on the emotions of others. And now she was in the real world, and her only companion was Severus, who found company irritating. It disturbed her, but there was nothing she could do about it. She had to just find her feet, and that would be that.

Bellatrix untangled herself from Severus and slid to the floor. If he wasn't awake before he would be now, but she didn't care. She crawled to a large, empty space on the ground and lay there, staring at the ceiling. The carpet was very cool on her back, and the solidness of the floor was somewhat reassuring.

The mattress of the bed creaked and she knew Severus was looking at her in the dimness of the bedroom. Light filtered in through the half-curtained windows from the streetlights outside, and cast the chamber in semi-darkness.

"Confused?" He asked.

"Are you looking in my head?" Bella whispered, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "I don't like it when you look in my head. Please stop."

"Don't worry," Severus murmured, "I'm not. I was guessing."

"Because I _am _confused," Bella admitted. Night time did such things to a person; loosened the mind and the tongue, and even managed to soften the sharpness of Severus' disposition. "And I miss a lot of people. We're going to the Forbidden Forest, did you know that? I never wanted to go in there. Some things are forbidden on purpose, you know…"

"And some things are unforgivable," Severus replied. "Yet, you used those curses all the same…"

"Oh, don't throw that bullshit at me, please," Bellatrix said, sounding somewhat disgruntled. "You've got to be one of the few people that actually get it."

"_Get _what, exactly?"

"Everything," Bella sighed. "Everything we did. Everything we wanted to do. We were just warriors, Severus, on the other side… but nobody seems to understand that anymore, not since that new generation came along to muck things up…"

Severus didn't answer.

"Do you think I'm crazy?" She asked suddenly, tipping her head to the side, her cheek cushioned on the carpet so that she could give him a proper look. "Like, really? They say I'm sane but we both know that what they think doesn't matter."

"I personally don't think there's a difference," Severus said. "You've always managed to destroy all the rules, Bella."

"It's not my fault," she muttered, "it's not my fault I think differently. Or feel differently. It's not. Is it?"

"No."

"Good."

She used her elbows to get herself into a sitting position, and stared at her bare feet. She resisted the urge to wiggle her toes. "Because, you know, everything _else _is my fault. Like the Longbottoms. Isn't that ironic? I incapacitated those two wand-happy maniacs and then I have to receive treatment in a facility owned by their son. Like, what the hell is going on? Do I attract irony and other assorted poetic devices?"

"You were using apostrophe a moment ago when you were talking to the ceiling," Severus pointed out helpfully.

"Shut up, Severus."

Ten minutes later, Bellatrix said, "… I didn't mean it."

"I know. I was going back to sleep."

"You know what you remind me of? Mushrooms."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well, like…" Bellatrix paused. "It's difficult to explain. You remind me of old-fashioned wizardry. You know, like those stories. Where everything is sort of… tan. And pleasant. And there's good and evil and no shades of grey. Except more of a forest. A very nice, dark forest… with mushrooms beside the path…"

Severus didn't answer.

"And there are magicians," Bella continued softly. "I don't know. It's kind of sad because the world isn't like that anymore. I mean, it's _never _been like that. That's why I can't remember."

"I don't know how whatever you are talking about relates to me," Severus said dryly.

"Neither do I," Bellatrix said, "it's quite unlike you. But it's like… very simple on the surface, but then you go down and it gets really complicated."

"I hope you know that the forest we're going to enter won't be like that," he pointed out.

"I know." She sighed gustily. "He told me about it."

"The Dark Lord?"

"Well, yes," Bella admitted, "but mostly Lucius. The Dark Lord merely told me never to go in there. Lucius, though… he talked about it…"

Severus made another one of his noncommittal throat sounds. He didn't like to talk, or think, about Lucius too much; but that was because he had known Lucius, and liked Lucius, and they had both carried so much complication and confusion that, frankly, he'd rather be without it.

As usual, Bellatrix didn't give a damn.

"He said it's old," Bella murmured, "very old. He said it reminded him of… the world, before humanity came along to fuck things up. It's from before axes and fire and electricity. He was scared of it."

"And you're prepared to go in?"

"Yes."

"Bellatrix, this might trigger another war. Are you prepared to do that?"

Stupid question. What a stupid, stupid question - even Severus knew that.

"Tell me, Severus," Bella said coolly. "How do you know the Dark Lord wasn't talking about his _memory _being immortalized? How do you know his 'immortality' isn't just the fact that he will never, ever be forgotten?"

"Because," Severus said, "he was afraid of dying."

.x.

_They were three figures, passing silently through the wood. All of them were slender, almost willowy in figure; but other than that, the similarity ground to a halt._

_If Voldemort had had his way, he would have undergone this journey with Regulus, and Regulus alone; but he was a child, a frightened child who may want to run, and in the Forbidden Forest Voldemort was more interested in his surroundings than the safety of the young Black._

_Which was why Lucius came along; beautiful, silent Lucius, who followed the path of the Old Way with light footsteps and phantom grace. Lucius, his right hand man, who had a firm grip on Regulus Black's elbow, and who wasn't about to let go very soon._

_They were silent. Voldemort had ordered it, for sound was not something one wanted to make in the Forbidden Forest. Here was when reality became slightly frayed, and everything was dangerous, and only prey crashed on through without a thought._

_But Voldemort was a predator. _

_It was raining, but the only proof of that was the pattering of water on leaves, high up in the canopy of trees, and the dampness in the air. Only a few raindrops slid to the loam below, and one of them hit Regulus on the top of his head, and he nearly took out Lucius' eye in his panic._

_It wasn't that Regulus Black was a weakling, or a coward. It was the forest itself, and the way it slowly began to unravel you… as if it had taken a stray thread in the fabric of your own reality, and tugged away at you and watched you slowly come apart…_

"_Not far," Voldemort said. It was, in fact, very far; but the path he took jumped space and time and logic and quickened the journey so that days became hours, and they passed through danger and went to the heart of their destination quickly, silently, and efficiently._

_It didn't take very long, once they got there. Regulus didn't resist… would never resist, for he had denied the Dark Lord but now, in some strange, surreal way, he was being spared…_

_And in the end, Voldemort had placed in Lucius Malfoy's palm a ring. "Don't lose it," Voldemort had warned, "I will ask for it, before the end."_

_Lucius - distrustful, wily Lucius, bound to Voldemort's feet by something as deep as blood - closed his slender piano fingers around the signet ring, and it was sealed._


	3. Directions

**To tell the truth, half the story is made up of little bits and pieces of information that, I hope, help to explain the characters a bit more. And yes, Lucius is a major controlling force in the story, because he is mean to me and likes to take over, especially since he is involved in no other way other than having been a prat in the past at the same time Severus and Bella were prats. Smashing.**

**Also, doesn't like to include brackets or whatever the hell you call them in my story, which I think is rather idiotic, but whatever. Weepy look, unhappy sulk, etc.**

**-**

Excerpt from _Chapter 3: The Right Hand _of "The Death Eaters: An Investigative Study", by Anita and Derrick Rodriquez, published October 2003.

Lucius Malfoy is theorized to be the backbone of the cult; the right hand man to You-Know-Who and key player in both the first war and the beginning of the second. Investigation has proven that Malfoy was behind nearly twelve recruitments into the Death Eaters; the twelfth was attempted in joint partnership with Walden Macnair (see page 56), which failed. Malfoy was one of the first supporters, and was said to be on intimate terms with the Dark Lord, who was, rumour has it, present at Lucius' birth and naming ceremony.

Lucius Malfoy was 'energetic, beguiling, and charming to the point of bedazzlement' (A. Tonks, _Interview #103_), and was highly thought of on all sides until his surprising arrest in early summer of 1996. He was jailed after a series of trials in December of that year, and was also pronounced healthy and sane and with full knowledge of his actions by investigators, thus rendering him incapable of receiving treatment at the Longbottom Institute. (In fact, only two Death Eaters were pronounced capable of treatment: Bellatrix Lestrange (see page 42), and Antonin Dolohov (see page 89).)

Lucius Malfoy was moved to and from three high-security prisons during the years of 1998, 2000, and 2001, respectively, as well as having undergone massive security measures due to various difficulties with prison guards, eight jail breaks, and one attempted suicide.

Directions

Severus woke up with Bellatrix leaning over him, her hair a wild mess about her face.

"Do you know what's odd?" she said. "Sounds. Ever think about it? How we take sounds… and our brain applies it to an action, or an object."

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"You know," she badgered, backing away as he sat up in bed, and nearly tripping over her own feet. He wondered if she'd slept at all, or how long she'd been hovering over his bedside, breathing in his face. "Like, I heard a motorbike outside. It was a sort of rushing sound… and I _knew _it was a motorbike, because I've heard it before, but it's _not _the _exact same sound _but I _knew _anyway…"

"Have you slept?" he asked.

"You're not listening to me," Bella said.

"Yes, I am," Severus said, "and though the words change, I always know your voice from its irritating whine. Get out and fix yourself up, you look like a mess."

"I _always _look like a mess, _Professor_, sir," Bellatrix said haughtily, before turning on her heel and flouncing to the bathroom. "And I'm using your toothbrush, git!" She added through the open door.

She was, Severus reflected, the main reason he never had women over.

.x.

Severus was not a very social person - he never had been. But there was something about Bellatrix Black that dug right under the skin, and stayed there. She would either contaminate you, and eat you alive, and you'd hate her for the rest of your life, or she'd grow on you, like some sort of weed, and even when she broke your heart and tore you up and made you cry you'd still welcome her back.

Severus had been infected with the latter.

He sat down in the kitchen and she crawled into his lap, all angles and bones and long legs, and her hair tickled his neck. Her body was warm against his chest, lean and lanky under her worn down Muggle clothes.

Many people did not like Severus, because there was not much to like; but Bellatrix liked him, for some strange reason, even though in the past she was often maddened, and screamed at him at times, eaten down by her own hysteria. Perhaps the doctors had cured that; perhaps not, but Severus wouldn't have minded either way. Bella had adored him, and made him smile; and sometimes she even impressed him, which was a shocking thing with Severus, who sometimes suffered from some sort of severe superiority complex - that's what all his past partners from his various relationships had said, anyway.

"Hey, Severus," Bella said after a moment, shifting until they were nose-to-nose, "What happened to my husband?"

"He's dead," Severus said, flatly.

Bella's jaw made a little shifting movement. "Oh."

Then she sighed, and laid her cheek against his chest. "I'll deal with it after," she said, matter-of-fact. "We leave today. And we'll have to visit someone before we go."

.x.

She'd never been to Antonin's yet, though she knew his address after looking it up, so Bellatrix had actually expected to take the underground instead of Apparating - it was risky, Apparating without knowing where you were going, exactly. Severus, however, destroyed the idea by offering to drive, which Bellatrix had heartily ended up regretting by the time she'd stumbled out of her seat and onto the sun warmed asphalt in front of Antonin's place.

She'd been in a car before, back when she was younger, but she had expected Severus to drive sensibly, since he was, usually, a sensible man. But Severus appeared to take his habits from Lucius (who drove like everyone on the road was personally insulting him), and so therefore seemed to be eternally suffering from an emotionless form of road rage.

Bellatrix made a retching sound.

Severus slammed his door and moved over to her, helping her onto the pavement. He was dressed severely in a long, black trench coat - Severus had suffered from a Goth phase when it cropped up in the 80s, and despite all denial, seemed to have never grown out of it. Bella had to admit, though, that he had to be one of the only full-grown men she'd ever seen look good sporting chains and fishnet, which was primarily what he wore whenever he was in the company of his goddaughter.

"I am Apparating back to your place," Bella said, pale. "That experience was both terrifying and somehow very nostalgic."

"Oh, it wasn't that bad," Severus said.

"You ran five red lights," Bella said.

Severus shook his head. "Only four. I counted."

Bellatrix rolled her eyes and shoved past, going up the steps to the house, which was rather normal-looking, as houses go. She rang the doorbell, and waited. Severus stood at her shoulder, looking around.

Antonin answered the door, and didn't look surprised. He, like Bellatrix, appeared to have wasted away; his body was lean and sinewy, starved. He was also deathly pale, with a long face that could be considered attractive from certain angles but was, all told, a very generic face for all of that.

"Hello." He said.

Bellatrix scratched the back of her neck. "I need to talk to you." She said.

"Yes," Antonin said. "I thought you might." He held open the door, and admitted them both. Then he led them to the kitchen.

Most people led guests to the living room, or any other sort of room for entertaining visitors; but over the years the Death Eaters who had made up the Inner Circle had ended up inviting each other into the kitchen, in keeping up old habits. It was something that tied them all together, whether they stayed faithful or turned traitorous or were only there because they had nothing better to do.

In the beginning, the Death Eaters had consisted of three levels. The first level encompassed them all, from the highest to the lowest, who never interacted with each other, their identities masked from their fellow members. The second level was called the Inner Circle, made up of the Death Eaters that had been among the first to join the organization - the Inner Circle knew each other, from school or otherwise, and their identities were not hidden. And then the third level was known of only to those within it, made up of the key few individuals of whom Voldemort entrusted with the most vital of information; not even Severus had ever been clued in on it.

Years ago, after the Inner Circle had participated in a group raid, instead of going to their respective homes they retired for the next six hours, sometimes deep into the early hours of the morning, to one of the other member's homes. And there they would sit, in the kitchen, speaking with one another. It was a form of nostalgia that every Death Eater, even Severus, could never really banish.

You couldn't help feeling, sitting in a kitchen with several other people who had fought with you and believed with you and killed with you, drinking tea or perhaps something a bit stronger, as if you actually belonged.

Antonin had been in the second level, and so he had taken up the tradition of the kitchen.

"Tea?" Antonin asked.

"No," Bellatrix said. Severus merely shook his head. "We have somewhere to go. I just need a map."

Antonin looked puzzled. "A map?"

"Yeah." Bellatrix said. She nibbled her pinkie nail. "The one the Dark Lord gave you."

"Ah." Antonin looked like a mix between shaken nerves and relief. "That's upstairs. But it's not a map, it's a set of directions."

"We'll wait." Severus said.

Antonin left the kitchen, and went upstairs; Bellatrix scuffed the heel of her worn-down sneaker on the shiny floor and tried not to look nervous.

"Directions," she said.

"A map would have been impossible, I think," Severus said, "After all, who can map the Forbidden Forest? It's a rather illogical piece of land."

"I'm bad with directions," Bellatrix said, "I nearly failed my Astronomy OWL because I kept forgetting how to assemble my telescope."

"Wouldn't you have figured it out by fifth year?" Severus asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No," Bella confessed, "Because Lucius did it for me every time during class, but he couldn't when OWLs came along. Hi, Antonin," she said, when Antonin appeared in the doorway, with a much-folded piece of paper clenched in his fist.

"Do I want to give you this?" Antonin asked, warily.

Bellatrix shrugged one shoulder, and smiled. "Does it matter?" she asked.

She held out her hand. Antonin gave it to her.

"Thank you, darling," she said, and kissed Antonin on the cheek, "I'll come back when this is all over."

.x.

Severus drove home, while Bella, true to her word, Apparated. When he walked through his front door he found her in the living room, struggling into her robes.

Her time as the Dark Lord's Heir had passed, yes, and she was no longer a Death Eater - the circle had been ripped and torn and shredded, like pages in a history book. But she still had her robes, robes that she loved for their meaning and their memory, and their usefulness could not by disputed, not even by Severus, who hated them.

She had abandoned her jeans her and shirt, and Severus came in to help her, pulling her long hair out of the way of the fastenings. The robes hung on her skinny frame, and it was only with Severus' help was she able to magically tuck in the folds, and lace up the back, and fit the sleeves around her wrists and hands.

The last time he had helped her into any of her clothing was on her wedding day, when she had been struggling to get into her dress. He'd walked into the tent - Bellatrix had demanded an outdoor wedding - and she had been sitting there in a daze, half-clothed, shredding the dress between her slender hands, littering the ground with scraps of ivory lace.

Clothes do not make a man, nor a woman - they do, however, add to them. Clothing was only fine if the wearer knew how to wear it properly; and thus it was that Bellatrix Lestrange was, indeed, one of the most faithful followers to her lord when she wore her robes, and was someone to fear, and respect, and even adore. Her chin came up, and her lazy, childlike manner was more like a falcon's, more predatory; sharp and angular and quick.

She was a Death Eater no longer, but she was still a dangerous woman, for all that. In her youth she was headstrong, but temperate; she was the material of the ultimate murderer, driven and focused, and was not hindered by the difficult habit of looking through the victim's eyes. But Bellatrix was not cold-blooded - she was righteous.

She never really grew up either, owing to much of her life in captivity; but she was still mature, and she still knew all that she had known those years ago, when she came into houses uninvited, and slaughtered the families within, and cast the Dark Mark into the sky. She was good at it.

She was _very _good at it.

Severus began to braid her hair. Bellatrix tugged on her sleeves, relaxed, never realising before how tense she had been.

"Think I'm evil, Severus?" she asked.

Severus didn't look up from his work; just twisted her hair into the plait. "No."

**-**

**Questions? Comments? Stupid mistakes I made that you need to inform me of? Tell me to stop writing? Click away at the review button, my dears.  
And I have a thing for Goth!Snape. Sad, I know. Mmph.**


	4. Old Places

**I haven't looked over this chapter as carefully as the previous three, because I am a terrible author lady. And such.**

**And watch as Lucius Malfoy manages to take over yet more and more of the story, even if he will never, ever make an appearance. It's a guy thing, I'm sure.**

Old Places

Severus was not an uneducated man by any means, though some often took his cold indifference and unwillingness to discuss world matters to be indications that he was about as narrow-minded as you could get without suffering from some form of mental claustrophobia.

But Severus merely did not like to discuss his opinion on things; that was like asking to be hated. Especially since his opinions were, to be frank, less than acceptable among society. He stayed silent, and kept himself to himself, and that was good enough for him.

So he was clever, in many, many ways, despite outside opinion. He was well-read, but that was a given; he was introverted, a bit of a loner, and his schooldays had been fraught with about as much bullying and spite as was possible - it was only logical that he had spent much of his time reading. But Severus was not a man to stay at home; after he had lost Regulus, and after Bellatrix had been locked away, he'd traveled abroad during the summers when he was not brought down by his teaching profession. Sometimes, he was with Lucius; at other times he was by himself.

Severus traveled for one reason: curiosity.

One of his more memorable trips, which was a trip of a more serious nature besides pure fancy - back when he was still in his twenties, a fledgling professor and relatively new to being an adult - had been with Lucius, who had expressed an interest in the goings-on of Africa and its inner turmoil. Severus had visited Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Ghana - anywhere he could. It had been dangerous for them both, of course, but that never stopped people like Severus and Lucius from anything, especially not the prospect of discovery.

And there were things in Africa that one discovered and never forgot.

Severus didn't believe in evil - never had. It had to do with spending time with Lucius. As much as Severus wanted to rid himself of the other man, Lucius Malfoy still held sway over Severus, even though he was locked away. He'd looked up to the other man, when he was younger - and when you loved somebody like Lucius, then it was hard to believe in evil. Lucius had killed people, yes; Lucius had done all manner of nasty things.

But he wasn't evil. Nobody who had seen Lucius smile, the day his son had been born, could ever think that. No one who had been there when Lucius Malfoy had been shivering under the hot African sun in Sierra Leone could doubt him.

There wasn't any good and evil; Severus had spent years embroiled in the company of the Death Eaters, and working among the Order of the Phoenix, and sitting at the sidelines. He had studied medicines, and poisons; how to defend himself against the Dark Arts, and how to use them to his advantage; how to hate and how to love. Severus didn't believe in evil, and when Bellatrix asked him, he had been quite confident in telling her no.

And it wasn't that the Forbidden Forest was evil, and made Severus think dark thoughts as he stood with Bellatrix at its borders. It was just that the Forest came from long ago; and who knew, maybe evil _had _existed, back when the earth was young. Within the Forest, time had ground to a halt, and stayed there, menacingly low in the undergrowth, unseen until something suitably young and tender shuffled by. Within the Forest, things were as they should have been, if it had not all gone so very, very wrong.

For as the Dark Lord once said, _We are men, so we are stupid; but stupidity has always had a hand in history. Even if it is a black hand_.

The Forest shivered, and laughed like the Little Folk.

He was holding Bellatrix's hand. When he was younger - maybe six - both of their parents had gone into town, bustling and busy and noisy, and Bellatrix had reached out and taken his hand, cool as you please, because he'd been nervous. He hadn't liked Bellatrix that much before all of that, because she was a bit of a bully; once, she'd even hexed his broomstick into violence, and shrieked with laughter as he'd tried to get on. But that day she'd reached out and taken his hand, because she knew he was nervous, and maybe she was a little nervous too, he didn't know, but right then he figured she wasn't such a horrible kid after all, even if she was a girl.

And suddenly, several decades fast forwarding into the dull grey present, there she was, standing there, at the edge of the Forest, looking into its depths with wide eyes; so he'd reached out, and clasped her hand in his, and she smiled a trembling smile.

Bellatrix knew she'd end up walking in. It was just how she was; and that was just the way it was, as well. Regulus needed her, her Lord had commanded, and nothing could stand in the way of a Black when her duty called.

But she wanted to prolong it, for just a little bit; because the Forest was frightening, because she knew that the Dark Lord knew it as well, and he'd told her once, one winter night, when she was just a teenager. _Don't ever go in there._

She was bad at following orders, though. Voldemort had known that; he'd known that as he was writing his last letter to her.

And though this was not Severus' challenge, but he would come anyway. Men were stubborn like that.

She squeezed Severus' hand. Her palm was a little sweaty; his was dry and warm. "Right," she said, to herself. She was a lady of the House of Black. A Black never stood down.

And she had at her side Severus Snape; Severus who she barely knew anymore, save from little glimpses into his head. She only knew the boy, the teenager, the young adult; she didn't really know this _man_, who had grown up far away from her, beside Lucius Malfoy, who moulded the character of everyone he touched.

But she trusted him. She trusted them both.

"Right," she said again. She used her free hand to hike up her robes and, still holding onto Severus, who trailed behind, loyally, fearlessly, she led him into the shadows of the Forbidden Forest.

.x.

Interview #17  
Lucius Malfoy  
May 12th, 2001  
Ministry of Magic (Britain) Royal and Governmental Archives

_Summary (compiled by Bridget Oriole, Overseer, written May 13th, 2001)_

We visited Mr Malfoy with the express wish to garner information on the Death Eaters that could not be found through any of our previous interviews with the purebloods of the First and Second wars.

Lucius Malfoy was a very hard person to contact, owing to his increased security and the fact that he was proven to be quite uncivilised when given the chance to speak. However, we managed to set up the appointment, and we arrived at the institute and were escorted into a room from which we could conduct our interview. Mr Malfoy was led in several minutes later, his hands magically bound, and his disposition calm.

In the beginning we garnered very little from Lucius, who, while appearing very polite at first, grew increasingly restless at our questions. He spoke little on how the Death Eaters operated, saying that he did not feel as if it was at all relevant. He also added that it was none of our damn business.

Our questioning went from the Death Eaters to Lucius Malfoy's relationships with other members of the war. He was much more cooperative at this stage, and was very frank with us. That is, until we stepped towards the subject of Severus Snape, and Lucius became very irritated. We moved on to Bellatrix Lestrange, and by that time Lucius refused to speak at all. Interesting. We reported this behaviour to the resident guard, who only said that Lucius became very hostile at any reminder of his erstwhile companion due to emotional damage he had received over the years.

Though our interview was over, we spoke at length with Lucius' attendants, of which he had many. They said that ever since his arrival seven months ago the keeper of the keys (Karen Olansk) was having Lucius' mental state judged weekly, due to his severe swings of perceptions. Lucius appeared both moody and unreasonable at certain times, and was given to fits of distemper and/or depression. Last week he was discovered burning himself upon the iron grate of an air vent that had grown too hot due to an overworked heater.

Lucius, however, still remains too sane to be introduced to the Longbottom institute.

.x.

The Forest shivered. The limbs of the trees shook, clawed twigs snapping at their robes, snagging on Bellatrix's long hair. She hissed through her teeth in frustration, pulling free, her thick robes rippling about her long legs and dragging eerily across brittle twigs and dead plants.

Severus' boots crackled against a dead bush. "Eerie, isn't it," he remarked, softly. Understatement. The atmosphere made Bella's skin crawl, and goose bumps prick up along her back.

_Of course - a natural reaction from ancient times_, she said in her head. The Dark Lord's voice had been soft and whispering, the day he'd said it to her. Whenever he had spoken, she drank up every word. _Back when human beings were furred, the scientists think. When one was scared, or cold. In the case of fear, the fur would go up to make you look larger to frighten off enemies - when you were cold, the hair would be there to trap in air for more heat. Scientific reaction, they say, rendered useless through evolution; but no one's ever sure of anything when it comes to science, since it's all guesswork and assumption but no one wants you to know that._

The air was sharp but moist, and the light was muffled and soft, green and brown and black. Bellatrix was frightened, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end and her spine prickled with thousands of unseen eyes behind every tree and under every scab of moss.

But Bella grit her teeth and kept going; because when you were scared, you did your best not to look it. _Scientific reaction… rendered useless by evolution…_

_Mental reaction as sharp as ever…_

She shoved her hand into her pocket and retrieved a wad of paper, and began to smooth out the wrinkles - it was the paper on which she had penned the directions from the original copy the Dark Lord had made. Severus had a copy as well - the original was safe at his home, under a suspiciously worn version of Austin's _Pride and Prejudice_.

Severus was glancing about him in an unruffled sort of way. Aristocratic calm, she called it. Severus may never have been the wealthiest pureblood around, but he had grown from an awkward boy into a graceful, intimidating man with a manner that befit a Manor lord. He technically _was _a Manor lord, but it was a Manor that had long ago started to crumble without the funds to keep it alive.

She wondered if he was as scared as she was.

She held the paper in front of her eyes, and squinted in the dim light.

"Forward through the yew," she said aloud. The yew trees stood, gnarled and menacing, at their backs; entrance and blessed exit to the forest. "And continue on until the roots become hands."

"Either he was being metaphorical," Severus said in the stillness of the wood, "or I am going to walk out of this place with an eternal fear of tree roots."

"Shut up, Severus," Bellatrix said. "The next line says, Turn to the west, and pace forward for five minutes. Shit. I don't have a watch, Severus."

"I have my pocket watch, Bella," Severus said. He touched a finger between her shoulder blades, urging her onwards. She sighed, and stepped forward. She had let go of Severus' hand almost immediately after they had entered; now she wished she hadn't.

"Continue until the roots become hands," she murmured to herself. Here and there the roots of the trees twisted out of the loamy earth, alive with juices and beetles and worms. There was a crackling sound - the sound of something crawling through the undergrowth - to her right, but she ignored it. She felt more than heard the rustle of cloth that signalled that Severus' hand had dipped to his belt, where he kept a knife hidden within the folds of his robes. Death Eater robes; even he had admitted that they would be useful for this venture.

"Continue on, then," he said.

"This is really pissing me off, Severus," Bellatrix said, trekking forward. She ducked under a low-hanging branch. Green, brown, green, green, brown, more green, black. The forest was vibrant and colourful, but muted with its mystery. "It's too quiet in here. I can hear things. Well. More so than usual."

"Pity." Severus said. "As a note, you keep stopping in your tracks, and I request that you cease it immediately. It is causing me to believe you have just seen something that horrifies you beyond all comprehension."

"I have," Bellatrix said. "You."

"My sides are splitting with laughter." Severus said dryly. "You do realise light-hearted banter isn't going to make you any braver than you are now?"

"It eases the muscles a bit," Bellatrix said, "and makes me pretend you're human."  
"You're doing it again. The _stopping_."

"Sorry. Right." Bellatrix fingered the dull golden wedding band on her ring finger and kept moving. She kept hearing more rustlings in the wood. She didn't care.

.x.

Interview #32  
Severus Snape  
July 17th, 2001  
Ministry of Magic (Britain) Royal and Governmental Archives

EXCERPT

Anita: What was your first impression of Lucius Malfoy?  
Severus: I thought he was a woman.

.x.

Bellatrix had been walking for fifteen minutes before Severus slammed her into a tree.

Her first instinct was to fight back, but her mind registered the circumstances and told her, no, because it was not some unknown enemy, but Severus, whose breathing had suddenly become fast and light and quiet.

She stilled, her eyesight full of bark and soft black cloth. Severus was effectively covering her. The moist bark smell of the tree filled her nostrils, and her head was heavy with the beating of her own heart and the crackling sound that was less than two metres away, pushing through the undergrowth.

Bellatrix shuddered, because her instinct was to fight and not to hide, but Severus just pressed her harder to the tree, keeping her under control, and his mind - soft and velvet and dark - touched hers and calmed her, begging her to hold her ground. She did.

The crackling sound stopped, and everything was heavy, and still. Bellatrix had no idea if Severus had cast a glamour over them both to shield them from preying eyes, or if he was relying on pure dumb luck that maybe if they didn't move they wouldn't be noticed. She hoped it was the former.

After a few minutes, the sound started up again, moving steadily away from them. Finally, Severus relaxed and stepped back, glancing over his shoulder. Bellatrix slumped against the tree.

"Did you get a good look at it?" She asked.

"No."

"How did it get so close to us without us noticing?"

"I'm not sure."

Bellatrix hadn't, to her surprise, felt any fear. She'd just felt… raw. Instinctive. Predators never let fear control them; they just did what they had to do.

She straightened up and turned to him. "Did you cast any spells?"

"Not really," Severus admitted. "I lifted up a bit of a mind shield, but I couldn't do anything stronger without catching its attention."

"Well," Bellatrix said, and sighed, "it was good enough. Unless it just came to stake us out, figured it needed reinforcements, and wandered off to fetch its crew."

Severus shrugged. "It could have been anything, Bellatrix. It could even have been a unicorn."

"Severus," Bella said, teasingly, "You might be maiden enough to attract a unicorn, but my aura would ultimately frighten it away. Besides," she added, "unicorns are bloody vicious."


	5. Divine Feminine

**I swear, this stuff is all relevant to the story. It is. Seriously. Ahahahaha.**

**The editing on this one is also off. I know. I am a bad, bad girl. Chuh. Scold me. Blah.**

Divine Feminine

There were times when Voldemort wished he was a woman.

He barely ever talked about it, of course. He mentioned it once, to Bellatrix, because he was certain she would understand, because she was a smart, fiery girl, with all the makings of a priestess deep in her bones. And understood she had.

But Voldemort once wrote, on one of those many letters he always used to write, which he would inevitably burn instead of sending, his wish to have been born a female. And though a female must change her name when she is married, and become a man's property, almost, Voldemort viewed this as a Christian custom and therefore did not take it seriously himself. That, and he doubted he'd ever get married, female or no. He was not the marriageable type.

However, all rambling aside, his letter went something like this:

_It is in my opinion that, as a whole, men are rather ignorant of power and, therefore, weak in this ignorance. There are, of course, exceptions - time will tell if I am one of them - in which this ignorance does not ring true, but for now I must content myself in realising that I am, truly, hindered by my gender._

_There is a simple explanation for this, which I doubt many will understand, since the ways of the world have long been splintered beneath the steady hand of God. For I speak of the Goddess, who is, according to many priests, a work of the Devil. (I find that odd, since the Devil isn't nearly as powerful, or important, as the Goddess was and is. For one thing, the Devil ended up being made King of Absolutely Nothing.)_

_But I digress (as I often do)._

_Any and all religions that worship or pay homage to - or at least respect - the Goddess is not a religion that was created for the boosting of mankind's ego, which I believe Christianity to be. I do not say this to anger, since many others do not like to discuss religion - offensive, apparently - but I say this to support my argument. Or my wish, rather._

_Sometimes, many times, I wish I was born female. And this boils down the that unearthly being dubbed 'the Goddess'._

_I am not a religious man, but I am spiritual, in my own right. I believe that mankind's first mistake, among many, was to ignore the earthly things. They became jumped up with their own power, and their own prestige - this applies to muggle and wizard alike - and, invariably, are going to end up destroying themselves. Not exactly a smart thing to do, but humanity as a whole is rather stupid. This could probably be explained by the fact that for years (that is, when the Romans took over) women have been regarded as property and therefore their opinions never caused due attention, but then Nelly McClung came along, and you know the rest._

_But, as usual, I think too much, and my mind has wandered from the original topic which I wished to speak of. I must work on that._

_Ah. Yes. The earth._

_I support the idea of the Goddess because, I think, any religion that was formed from the frantic belief that the world is the mother of all things had the right idea. Nature is and was the beginning and end of all life. Technology does not create life (though it hints at trying with each passing year; yet another folly of man) nor can it destroy it. You can kill a man, but it is the earth that devours him, in the end._

_The destruction of nature has always been a sore spot for me, because of my talent of speaking to snakes (who have been symbols of reincarnation, regeneration and holiness for generations. Modern wizards have started to associate snakes with the Dark Arts, because the Dark Arts were often used to unveil the Mysteries of this world and others, and snakes were strong symbols of the earth and land and therefore the pagan religions which sought to understand Mystery at its darkest; but reputation oft grows tainted with time and enough meddling.) The earth is very important, since we - 'we' being synonymous for 'everyone' - live on it. This is apparently a very hard idea for many people to wrap their minds around. Most of these people are_

_a) men, or_

_b) housewives._

_I am, unfortunately, a). However, I am, fortunately, _not _b), since I find most children annoying, and I have, frankly, had quite enough cleaning experience to last me until the end of the world (if everything goes according to plan, I shall live that long)._

_There I am, getting sidetracked again._

_You see, the world is and was the mother of all things, and only a female can understand it. Yes, it is true - women suffer, often. They are plagued by all sorts of pains, such as menstruation, and childbirth - but these they suffer fairly, for they are also given the gift of knowledge, and understanding. Women know the pain of life. Men - ha, men. Men may plant their seed and stand back, but a woman nurtures the child within her womb, and after when it is born. Men know nothing._

_Men know not the pains of childbearing, though they have, often, over the generations, made it a habit of 'fighting to protect the women' and killing themselves upon the field of battle. But that is mainly their fault for being stupid, and making up such a silly thing as honour. Honour gets you nowhere. It just makes you feel better._

_Men are free of the pains of women. They pay for this luxury by having to be ignorant._

_I resent my gender. It was useful, of course - a man traveling the world raises less brows than a woman - but still. If I were a woman, I'd be a priestess of the earth; and maybe I could understand it all, and glimpse those Mysteries for which I have sought all these years._

_I must content myself in being a man. The Druids had survived long ago - Merlin survived, after all - in the presence of those females. Besides that, there are none any more - I have no need to fear that there shall be a black-clad lady at my back, laughing at my ignorance. Perhaps one day, Bellatrix will grow, and become that which I have sought; and that will be well and good, for I have nothing to fear from her, and I wish only the best for her. She will be fourteen, soon. I must find something to give to her._

_I do not like many children, but she is alright._

He was a complicated man, but all fascinating people are complicated. He was a work of art; the Mona Lisa of the wizarding world. And they all tried to burn him because they were afraid of his smile.

Bellatrix, however, was somewhat of an expert on Lord Voldemort, in the same way Robespierre had been an expert on revolutions.

.x.

Bellatrix kept stopping, no matter what Severus said to sway her. She just couldn't help it - there were all these little glitches on the edge of her memory, chewing on her spine, telling her, over and over, _turn around, turn around and you can see me…_

Finally, with a frustrated sigh, Severus swept past her, catching her elbow as he did so and momentarily pulling her along. She stumbled, found her footing, then trailed after him dutifully, her dark eyes glancing about the whispering forest and its peculiar shadows.

She wanted to hold Severus' hand again, but she didn't. Part of it was because Severus was foul, bad-tempered, and was very bad when it came to hand-holding; the other bit was that, mostly, she wasn't sure if she was comforting herself, or showing a shred of the sisterly affection she had always felt for him.

"See any hands popping out of the ground yet?" she asked.

"No," Severus muttered. _Turn around, little girl_, the trees teased.

"Ah." Bella said. She crossed her arms over her chest and stuck her hands in her armpits, trying to warm them. She should have worn gloves, but she had no idea the chill of the forest would reach past the emotional and sink its claws into the physical. It was summer, after all - she'd expected something warmer.

There was a snapping sound, at her shoulder. Without thinking she whipped around, hand diving into her robes for her wand, taking one step back, tensing her body for a strike.

But nothing was there. Nothing except an imperceptible movement at the corner of the eye, that blended into the shadows of the emerald green trees. She grit her teeth and turned around with a huff, and she could hear the laughter, buzzing irritably in her ears.

But as she turned, she realised that Severus wasn't there.

Her mouth twisted. "Fuck."

.x.

Well, she was gone. He wasn't at all surprised by that.

"You're an idiot," he said, sighing, to the silent forest. It did not talk to him; it knew that if it did, there would be hell to pay. This was not a man of the wild, to be tiptoed about and laughed at. This was a scientist, and logical thinker, someone who saw past the glamour and saw only the lies. He was not to be reckoned with.

Well. Severus sighed. He couldn't stick around all day - he'd have to get to Regulus, then, and fast.

Bellatrix was on her own - if he were to wander about to find her, well, that was just plain stupid. And she knew that. So he didn't bother with it. He just kept going.

Pure habit.

.x.

_He can remember it, vividly. Or maybe he only remembers one, and all the others just mesh together. It's not like it matters, anyway, because it's all the same, when you get down to it._

_The same type of girls, the girls that thought they could change him and his ways, habits, neurotic and obsessive as they were. It was just too tempting to resist. He wasn't much to look at, but he certainly was skilled, and he could make a girl blush to the roots of her hair with the sort of things he could whisper in her ear, mixtures of endearments and flattery and bedroom talk._

_And sometimes they moved in with him, but they just couldn't stand it. "Who's this?" They would demand, thrusting a photo of a beautiful, dark-haired woman in his face. And he'd shrug and say, "Bellatrix." Because the photo was worn and Regulus had accidentally spilt water on it, once, and besides, Bella had been in the past, and that was that. Sometimes he'd wake up, and realise it was her birthday, and cringe because he'd forgotten; then he would remember that it didn't matter, anyway._

_But the girls didn't like that. They didn't like to think of other women, because Severus was quite a catch to the type of girls he dated - namely, them. He liked the dark ones, with the leather corsets and too much makeup. Young girls, too, not much older than his students, sometimes, because they liked the thought of a tall, forbidding man who made vampires look laughable. Young girls always liked to play pretend, Severus figures; unless you counted his goddaughter, but she was special, because she had Bella's eye for truth and a frightening ability to accomplish anything she set out to do._

_But they couldn't stand him because he had secrets all over the house, and you couldn't decipher them. Like the photos… like that framed picture of a tall, slender woman, a modern Helen of Troy in a wrinkled dress, her hair long and blonde, sleeping on the couch that was in Severus' living room. There were letters to and from someone called Lucius, there was a garnet and silver necklace in the kitchen in the knife drawer, and there were books written all in Latin that made the room feel cold._

_And Severus was never home - off teaching at some elegant boarding school, apparently, because he was oh-so intelligent, and his very presence made you want to scream because his superiority crawled over you and suffocated you and no woman on earth could stand that._

_Except for, maybe, that suspiciously beautiful woman, whose picture was kept inside a copy of _Hamlet

_So they always ended up leaving him, not that he cared. He'd just sit at the kitchen table with his forehead on the tabletop, and sigh, and wonder why the hell he even bothered._


	6. Correspondence 1980

**Updated quickly and promptly, because Oya, beloved reader, request that I do so.  
****See? I'm nice. ;)**

**Note on translation:  
**"**Sorry. I'm sorry."**

Correspondence 1980

.x.

To: Severus Snape  
Jan 18th, 1980

Severus,

I've noticed; don't dare presume I have not. While you habitually hide yourself from the public eye anyway, you seem to be of late scarcer than usual.

You've locked yourself away, correct? As I thought. You've always had a habit of running off - must be all the Slytherin in you. So, since you will not speak to me in person (as I know you will not), I request that you communicate with me via owl post. One is far more likely to be less than anxious when consulting through the written word. Is that not so? It's part of the reason why diaries have been all the rage over the centuries, I think.

I am certain you hate me; I don't blame you.

Please respond.

--LM

.x.

To: Severus Snape  
Jan 21st, 1980

Severus,

You cannot ignore me, because I have refused such a fate ever since I was born. Pure human nature. It's in the very bones. The marrow, even.

Talk to me. I will not let you waste away.

Bellatrix says hello.

--LM

PS - Stop starving yourself. I know you are. You are thin enough as it is already.

.x.

To: Severus Snape  
Jan 25th, 1980

Severus,

You are seriously trying my patience. I know you receive my letters, and I know that you are reading them. I know that you fold them back up and hide them away in the top drawer of your desk and spend your days sitting on the floor staring in their direction, and wondering what the hell is wrong with me, and you, and the world, and everything else, for that matter.

I will not tolerate this foolishness much longer.

--LM

.x.

To: Severus Snape  
Jan 27th, 1980

That is it.

Respond within the next two days or I will hunt you down in whatever dark secret oh-so-depressing corner you are hiding in.

--LM

.x.

To: Lucius Malfoy  
Jan 28th, 1980

Fuck off.

--S Snape

.x.

To: Severus Snape  
Jan 29th, 1980

Thank you. But no.

--LM

PS - Now that wasn't so hard, was it?

.x.

To: Lucius Malfoy  
Jan 30th, 1980

I hate you.

I hate your eyes and face and hair and voice and perfect hands and calm smile and infectious laughter and polished boots and walk and lips and tongue and those ears that are so perfectly shaped. I hate your chin and the way it angles up and your white teeth and neck and shoulders and throat and waist. I hate your hips and feet and knees and your mind and the way you touch my face as if it actually means something.

I hate your control and perfect life that's imperfect in a beautiful way that's beautiful like you. I hate the fact you love me because it will probably just die because you're vain and clever like that by putting such feeling on my shoulders and forcing me to look you in the eye and speak the truth even when all I want to do is spit out lies like you do.

I hate you and I hate myself and I hate every single breath I breathe because it takes me farther away from him and you took him away and it's YOUR fault he's dead and YOU killed him but it's all my fault really and I hate you because I love you but I loved HIM and I can't be with him anymore.

I can't touch his lips or see his eyes or feel his hair or love him as I have always done because I am a fool and always will be and I write and write and regret what I write but I WILL NOT start over because I hate hate hate you and he's dead and gone and his memory is fading from my mind at this moment and at this minute because I am too weak and cowardly and unfaithful to hang on.

I hate you and your stupid fucking smile and hands and fingers and nails and eyes and irises and pupils and lashes and eyebrows and skin and jaw and throat and clavicle and I hate the fact you never cry because you're better than me and always have been and nothing can ever change that.

--S Snape

.x.

To: Severus Snape  
Jan 30th, 1980

Désolé.

Je suis désolé.

--LM

.x.

To: Lucius Malfoy  
Jan 30th, 1980

You said you didn't speak French.

--S Snape

.x.

To: Severus Snape  
Jan 31st, 1980

I lied.

--LM


	7. Narcissus

**I am a bad girl for not updating, rah. I'm sorry. Okay, here's the BB gun, and this is my hand. I'll even put a little target on it in red ink if you need it.**

**Yes, the excerpt within the chapter is from an actual book. I loves you, Nigel Pennick.**

**Oh, God. Too tired to edit. Too lazy. Blah, blah blah blah. I gave you the BB gun for a reason, you know.**

When the dark wood fell before me  
And all the paths were overgrown;  
When the priests of pride say,  
'There is no other way.'  
I tilled the sorrows of stone.

_Dante's Prayer_, Loreena McKennitt

.x.

Severus had found the hands.

Voldemort was neither being poetic, nor cryptic. He was just stating what he saw… and what could be seen, for roughly ten metres ahead of Severus, were the roots of trees reaching up from the ground, twisting into shapes that were unmistakably hands.

There are old tales, where it is said that those who cut down the wrong forest, or threatened the wrong innocent, were devoured - pulled into the gaping trunks of ancient trees, locked there forever, their face frozen within the bark for all to see.

That was what Severus was reminded of as he got out his pocket watch, keeping an eye on the hands, for he need not walk through them else Voldemort would have written that down. Then, keeping his eye on the minute hand, achingly slow in its ascent, turned west.

He wondered faintly what Bellatrix was up to.

.x.

Bella had not known whether or not to stay upon the path at first, but then had decided against it. The path frightened her all of a sudden, as if it were expecting something large and dark and angry to thunder down it and destroy her.

So she took to the woods. It was hard going, but she went nonetheless, avoiding the thorns. She was fairly certain that they wouldn't pierce her thick robes, but she wasn't about to take that chance. She'd heard of plants that had poisonous thorns - mostly from Narcissa, because Narcissa was a clever girl, almost as clever as Severus in many regards.

As she battled her way through a very insistent bush, she thought. Her best bet would be to relocate herself, find out her direction according to the sun, and try to move on from there. She doubted it would work, but she could try. If she managed to make it out of the Forest, she could start over again at the beginning and try to catch up to Severus, so long as he didn't get lost as well.

If he did, well, that would be something to needle him about if they both got out of this alive.

She untangled the skirt of her robes from a few clinging brambles and paused, listening. There was a tinkling sound in the air - or in her head - and it was faint and soft. Voldemort would have called it elf music. Maybe that was what it was.

She picked a twig out of her hair thoughtfully, and flicked it away into the dark. Her hair was coming out of its plait. Not that she cared.

"Alright." she said, to no one in particular. She moved in the direction of the music. She had a feeling there was something behind her, but she realised that something was always behind you in the Forbidden Forest.

Bellatrix forced her way through some more bushes and trees before pausing, catching sight of something lush and green between the gaps in the branches. She blinked and, curious, shifted forward. The elf music trilled in her ears.

She was besides a clearing that sloped downwards, and there was a little pond that gathered like rainwater in a bowl. The grass was thick and a vibrant green, and made her want to remove her boots and walk barefoot. Instead she bent down to touch the blades of grass, feel the moistness and the greenness. There was an impossible sense of calm to the place, as if she had stepped into another world, a different plane; she very well could have, for all she knew.

There was a safeness to this clearing, and Bellatrix knew nothing could harm her if she stayed.

Her eyes were drawn toward the pond. There was a gathering of reeds to one side, and as she walked forward, descending, she saw the sandy little bank and the clear water and the multicoloured pebbles, of a sort she and her sisters would gather on a hot spring day to present to their parents before the sun went down.

There was something beautiful about the water, clean and otherworldly. She wanted to taste it. She knelt at the bank, leaning forward a little, dipping cupped hands into the water and drinking it, unafraid. The water was sweet, and droplets from the gaps in her fingers trickled down and rippled across the pond.

She sat back and looked at the water, waiting as it stilled once more. She could see her reflection, faint and shimmering and silvered by the water.

She had never realised how beautiful she was.

Her hair was soft and silky, her lips moist and full and almost pouting. Her eyes were hooded and dark and her expression that of a queen.

What a lovely face she had. She remembered Rodolphus, speaking flatteries into her ear. He had been right when he had said she was the most beautiful girl in the world. How on earth, she thought, admiring her reflection, could she love anyone other than herself?

She forgot about Severus, and Regulus, and everything else. She just looked deep into her own eyes, and her heart was happy.

.x.

Severus followed the direction. After he hit the five minute mark he stopped, and waited for the designated thirty seconds.

_Turn right and walk until you see the fairy tree._

As he passed by, Severus was quick to notice the markings carved into the tree trunks; laid down in some sort of archaic pattern that he could follow only slightly. They were cut and hacked into the bark and left as open wounds, deep in the flesh of the trees. The symbols were binding, defensive, warning, and it was to Severus' frustration that he could only partially translate them.

Perhaps they had been there for hundreds of years. Perhaps they were cut by the Dark Lord, or Dumbledore, or the founders of Hogwarts, or maybe someone even greater and darker than all the rest who had disappeared in the shadows of myth a long time ago.

Severus traced his fingertips over the fifteenth symbol he passed, nails digging into the cuts. There was a whisper in the back of the mind as he traced, as if the symbol wanted to call up something dark from his past.

The shadows were deeper, now, and the light thinning. There were places in the world where time ran restfully; but where Severus was now it seemed to want to speed up, as if it were impatient.

Severus distrusted the Forbidden Forest at night, rightfully so. He had his wand out and ready, though he knew that it would take more than a wand to win if he were attacked. Those in the Forest didn't play by rules. They played to win.

He kept moving, following the directions that Bella had written in her untidy, scrawling hand. Her writing could be elegant, of course, but often she wasn't in the mood to use her hand properly, so her graceful cursive morphed into a bunch of messy twirls. _Walk until you see the fairy tree. Respectfully remove a small branch from oak, thorn, and ash, and bind together with red silk_.

Severus sighed. There were many types of magic, and Voldemort had dabbled in nearly all of them, religious or otherwise. Voldemort had puzzled Severus; Voldemort had paid respects to nearly all the Gods he had ever heard of, from ancient to new, reaping power as he went - and he got away with it. Either Voldemort was blessed, or Severus was correct in believing that gods didn't exist.

It was probably the latter - but with Voldemort, who knew?

The bit with the red silk obviously drew origins from natural magic, which was a smattering and gathering of traditions, blessings, and practices that Voldemort had been quite fond of. "It's a sensible practice, what can I say," he'd said, stringing together nine little bones he had gathered from nine dead toads on a red silk braid. Red was the most powerful colour in natural magic. It signified blood.

Very sensible, indeed.

.x.

She didn't know how long she sat there, gazing into the water. It must have been a long time.

A soft breeze, gravity, a quiet shifting of her muscles… she didn't know what did it, but something budged a single strand of her hair which had drifted out of the braid. It arched downward, maddeningly graceful and slow, to touch the water.

Ripples erupted from its tip.

With a gasp Bellatrix tore herself away from her broken image and crawled away from the bank, laying sprawled across the ground. She buried her face into the lushness of the grass, her breathe bursting in her chest, her stomach sick. The clearing would keep her safe from all things, save herself. And that was one thing she was quite afraid of.

Her stomach heaved, but she refused to retch. She knew she had been beautiful once, but time had altered her into something sharper, darker. The pond… that pond had been something that had dug right into her mind, altered her very perceptions, until she could not help but swoon at her own reflection.

Bellatrix got to her knees and spat the vile taste of sickness out of her mouth. A regular little Narcissus she was, wasn't she.

She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. She wanted water, but didn't dare risk straying near the pond and becoming captured by the reflection again. There was something eerie about reflections. People used to think your reflection was the devil, or your inner self, or something entirely different altogether.

People think silly things sometimes. Like that maybe beauty was the only thing that mattered.

.x.

A fairy tree is not one tree; it is three that have grown together in such close proximity that they have grown into each other, twisting and moulding into a weird shape. Ash, oak, and thorn were the components of a fairy tree, and their unusual appearance supposedly attracted earth sprites and other unnatural creatures, and the land about a fairy tree tended to take on a curious and special character.

Frankly, it disturbed the hell out of Severus, who looked up at the one Voldemort had directed him to with a little twist to his mouth.

He took out his knife, gripped the blade between his teeth and began to climb the tree - or trees, rather. He carefully settled himself upon an oak limb and, removing the knife from his mouth, sliced off a twig from the living tree, murmuring his thanks. He could see, with a little jolt of surprise in his stomach, that the wood was scarred in certain places, which meant that years ago, someone else had been doing what he was doing now.

Voldemort had to have been one of them.

Shuddering, Severus stuck the oak into his pocket and moved on to the thorn. He wasn't sure what type of thorn tree it was, since the light was rather dim, but that didn't matter. He cut the ceremonial way, from the bottom and then up, severing with one stroke. Once he had then gathered the ash he carefully made his way to the ground, not wanting to drop the wood - it would lose its power once he did.

He gathered the small branches together and took out the silk thread, binding it all together into a neat bundle. Ash was protection from harmful creatures and spirits; oak would ward off lightning; thorn would direct magical power, and was also protective. It was protection in triplicate; a powerful talisman from harm. Severus doubted it would work, but that was just a natural reaction from him.

_Hold it in front of you and circle the tree nine times. _

_Go east._

Severus had gone beyond feeling foolish when it came to ritual, so without hesitation he held the bundle before him and walked, circling the tree nine times, a magical number. Then he turned east.

As he passed a bent old apple tree, he noticed more symbols hacked into the bark.

.x.

_The **Crane** (_Megalornis grus_) has been a significant power-bird for many thousands of years. Images of cranes appear on Celtic and Roman altars, and its movements are the origin of the human ceremonial crane-dance in labyrinths. The Crane is a symbol of watchfulness. It guards entrances to the Otherworld, both the world of non-human spirits and the world of the dead. Similar attributes are given to **Herons **and **Storks **(order _Ciconiformes_), also long-legged stalkers. Celtic magicians carried a magic bag made from the skin of a Crane. In it were their magical power-objects, used in divination. For this reason, traditional Celtic mysteries are sometimes called _The Crane-Bag of Secrets

Excerpt from _Way of Natural Magic, _Chapter 4: Magical Animals & Birds, by Nigel Pennick.

.x.

Bellatrix had been lying in the grass, having decided that walking - and moving in general - was unnecessary. But then a piece of her hair tickled the corner of her eye, and she was forced to irritably rub at it with her fist.

She could swear that the pond giggled behind her. She grit her teeth as she struggled to her feet, and began to wipe her face to clear away the dried sweat. Disgusting. But human bodies were, and always have been, disgusting; Bellatrix knew that long before the fellow girls in her year at Hogwarts had, who expected men to be clean and polished and shaven and perfect, and who all wanted to be as fake as the moving photos of wizard celebrities on the front of glamorous magazines.

Bodies were made of bone and mucus and tissue and saliva and blood. Bella knew this as a young girl because she was the sort of girl who looked at the world with nothing in front of her eyes. Bella knew this even more so as a young woman, having taken apart enough bodies to know the human anatomy quite well.

If you cut someone, they bled. A lot of them had split ends in their hair. They had intestines and lungs and sweated when they were hot. It was disgusting, but somehow it comforted Bellatrix, especially when she was locked away from reality during both her imprisonment and her recovery, since it was just more proof that things were real and she wasn't totally insane.

She dug the toe of her boot into the moist black earth, terrorizing the roots of the grass. She might as well move along, then. The sun blared brightly into her little clearing, and when she looked up there were no clouds to hinder the perfect blue of the sky.

It disturbed her, somewhat.

She turned about in full circle, observing her shadow. She would have to move south if she wanted to reach the edge of the forest. It was afternoon, so that meant the shadows were all pointing… northeast?

She set her teeth and trekked back into the forest, leaving the calmness of the clearing behind.


	8. More Damned Than We

**Of course, the editing on this is shit as well. Argh, bad me! Slap my wrist. Go ahead. Do it.**

More Damned Than We

_Go East.  
__Stop at the spring, turn north.  
__Walk between the two sparkling rocks.  
__And then you will come to the tree._

.x.

It is an impulse, among many life forms, to own things. Whether that be your mate, your clothes, your digital watch… there is a driving need to call something your own. Even some of the supposedly unintelligent life forms - wolves, lions, monkeys - have taken on the view of ownership in the form of territory.

Sometimes territories overlapped, or were within another territory, or something like that. Severus knew as he moved that he was crossing through several territories, which meant that he was angering many creatures as he did so. But he was a wizard - a clever one, at that - and it was doubtful that anything would attack him if he showed no threat.

There were always the chosen few, however.

Severus could sense the creature as he fought through the brambles, the directions he had been given having taken him off the path long ago. There were too many movements at the corner of his eye, too much silence behind him. It was following him, stealthily. But Severus had been a Death Eater, and few could sneak up on any of them. For one, they were trained for stealth. Secondly, they were highly paranoid, and were always under the impression of being stalked.

He clenched the bundle of thorn, ash and oak in one hand, using the knife in his other to hack his way through like a darker, sicklier version of Indiana Jones. The knife he used was a large bladed item with a bone handle, and was his personal ceremonial knife that had been made for him by Lucius. Usually he would not have used the knife in such an undignified way, but the direction he was taking was hampered by over a decade's worth of vegetation that felt it was its duty to halt his progress. Severus was respectful of magic and tradition, but he was also logical.

The light was falling faster now, so that Severus had to pause for a moment and, keeping a careful eye on his surroundings, attempt to magically alter his eyesight. It took only a few seconds, since it was a spell Severus had often used throughout his life - his lifestyle demanded that movement at night was the smartest route to survival.

Now, Severus was unable to see as fully has he could have had there been daylight, but now his vision showed a landscape bathed in bright silver moonlight, which was better than the murky darkness of the forest.

He tucked his wand back into his robes and continued on, his knife glinting in the new light. The knife had a name, but Severus hadn't the urge to attempt to call up his memory now.

Behind him, the creature murmured.

.x.

Bellatrix was lost again, and she knew it wasn't her fault.

Her father, before he had died, had taught her how to use the sun to find direction. "We are in the northern hemisphere, Bella, which means that sunlight is angled northward from the south - the side of the sky that is darker on one side than the other side is north. The sun sets in the west, and rises in the east, and the quality of its light will tell you whether it is morning or afternoon. In the morning, the sun is in the east, and therefore also angled in the south; in the afternoon, it shines in the west. It's complicated, but you get the hang of it. Do you understand?"

She had.

It was the Forest playing with her, and she knew it. She knew all the tales of the faerie sprites, of Goodfellow and others, who played about with the paths and the trees and kept travellers lost forever in the woods.

She wasn't going in circles. She was going in a pentacle, most likely - far more amusing that way. She swore she was moving north, when, in reality, the forest was shifting, and altering her path.

Bastards, the lot of them.

But Bellatrix was a patient woman, in her own way. She had waited years for her Lord to save her from Azkaban, and a tricky forest with laughter hiding under every tree was not a strong enough test to break her patience.

She stopped beside a tree, which towered above her so high that looking at it made her dizzy, and sat down on the mossy roots. She tucked her feet into the skirt of her robes and looked around, frowning a little. She leaned back, expecting some twiggy, horrific arms to wrap themselves around her and strangle her like they did in old movies, but the tree didn't budge at all.

She was very aware of the shadows at the corner of her eye, and the way they moved beneath the stationary sun.

.x.

Severus was quiet.

His own breathing sounded loud to his ears as he leaned back against the tree, streaking moss across the back of his robes. He clenched his knife in one hand and his wand in the other; in his head were the dozens upon dozens of spells and attacks and defences that he could use and would probably, due to the irony of the world, not work.

Severus shifted a little, the sound loud in the silence of the forest at night. Ahead of him he could see a clearing through the gaps in the trees, where the glitter and flash of moonlight gave away the spring that was at its centre.

Unfortunately, there was something between him and that spring.

Worse, there were several somethings behind him, which meant running away like a scared little girl was entirely out of the question.

There was the crunch of dried leaves and the soft, wet sound of something sharp digging into loam. Severus tensed. If he could only locate whatever the hell was in front of him he could run for the spring, find the rocks, and then attempt a dash to the last step of his journey. That was, of course, with the hope that behind the thing in front of him there weren't any more.

Severus' grip tensed on the knife and something in his vision moved. There - a flicker of movement, to the right. He desperately hoped that was the only threat in front of him as he threw himself forward, sprinting through the tangled brush of the forest.

He could hear the others move too.

He stumbled and attempted to hop-skip over a fallen tree. He shot by the creature that had been blocking him from the clearing.

For a second he could sense it, smell the blood on its lips, feel the warmth of its body close to his, hear the breathing, stale and laboured and hungry…

And then he was into the clearing.

The grass was springy and lush under his feet. There was a sharp clack behind him, that of jaws snapping together inches from the back of his neck. The spring sparkled beautifully in the middle of the clearing, even without the added light of his magical vision. It was a dream, perfection in the midst of terror that made everything all the more frightening.

The creature, angry now, snorted through its nostrils and with the added courage of its fellows at its back crashed into Severus, sending them both to the grass. Severus shouted and attempted to get away, though he could feel sharp claws shredding at his robes with each movement, nearing his skin.

His mind snapped to attention and Severus kicked out, connecting with his assailant. Suddenly the talisman he had made from the fairy tree burned red hot in his sleeve where he had stuck it, and the creature let out a shriek and released him. He scrambled on all fours to the spring and threw himself into the water, hoping he was doing the smart thing.

He went under, deeper than he expected, though he soon found his footing. Once he had emerged, soaking wet, still gripping his wand and knife, he could see the creatures clustered at the edge of the clearing, bristling, angry, hungry.

"Yes, I thought so." Severus said grimly.

And he stood there staring levelly at them, up to his waist in holy water.

.x.

RODOLPHUS LESTRANGE: STATS  
STATUS: DEAD  
LOCATION OF BODY: LESTRANGE FAMILY TOMB, FRANCE  
BIRTH DATE: 1956/10/11  
DEATH DATE: 2002/04/18  
GENDER: MALE  
EYE COLOUR: BROWN  
HAIR COLOUR: DARK BROWN  
HEIGHT: 5'11 ½"  
MARITAL STATUS: MARRIED (BELLATRIX BLACK)  
DEFINING FEATURES: SCAR RUNNING BENEATH RIGHT UNDERARM TOWARDS THE BOTTOM CENTRE OF RIBCAGE. KNOTWORK TATTOO ON ANKLE.  
FAMILY: SETH LESTRANGE (FATHER), ASTARTE LUROV (MOTHER), RABASTAN LESTRANGE (BROTHER), LAUREL LUROV (AUNT, GODMOTHER)

Taken from _Chapter Eight: The Brother Grim _of "The Death Eaters: An Investigative Study" by Anita and Derrick Rodriguez.

.x.

Their fur was long and dark, hanging from their hides, shaggy and fine. Their teeth were long as well, sharp and angled horrifically, moving past lips and jaws and sticking out from their mouths. Severus could see the glint of their eyes as they shuffled about the outer edge of the clearing, murmuring amidst themselves. Their attributes seemed to be an ugly mesh of bear and dog, though they were obviously quite intelligent.

They were not ugly, but they were not very nice to look at, either. They reminded Severus of something straight out of a Stephen King book.

Every now and then one of the creatures passed by the markers - two large stones, almost as high as Severus was tall, and studded with crystals that sparkled in the reflecting light of the pond. Roughly, upon each rock, was the crude carving of a bird - cranes, Severus correctly supposed. Between them ran a dirty path, worn down by countless feet, leading off into the darkness of the forest. That was the road he was supposed to take.

Unfortunately, he was still in the spring.

Severus was cold and wet and threatened by unknown creatures, and that made him irritable. Which usually never boded well for anyone.

Severus was soaked with holy water, but he wasn't sure if that would be enough to keep the creatures away. He would have to try something else, and also hope that the magic of his fairy tree talisman hadn't been washed away by the spring. He tucked his wand into his sleeve and looked about, studying his surroundings. Nothing to stand in his way except for his assailants.

He sheathed his knife and removed from his robes a damp white handkerchief, luminous in the dark. He dipped it into the water, submerging it fully, and gathered all four corners together, tying them together tightly and gripping it underwater with his fingers.

Carefully, he moved towards the shore. The water would slow his movements while he was in the spring and pull down on his stride on land, and he was only interested in the latter - the former he could destroy if he got near enough to the edge without being noticed.

He was forced to stop every so often, as muzzles jerked in his direction. The creatures were quite aware of his movements, which Severus found disappointing, but not surprising. They weren't stupid, after all. They were an alien, intelligent race with their own faults and feelings; perhaps they might even underestimate him, if he was lucky.

So, abandoning all pretence, he waded to the shore, and onto the bank. He pulled with him the handkerchief, hefting it out of the water behind him, hoping his robes would properly obscure it. Water slopped and dripped from the handkerchief, but it also slopped and dripped from his robes.

Without waiting Severus broke into a sprint, heading right for the path between the two rocks with the cranes etched into their surfaces. They was a sharp, alien cry, which reminded Severus eerily of a hunting horn, as the creatures gave chase.

As he expected, just as he was about to move through the stones something jumped down from between them, blocking his path. Severus flung his arm out towards it, the collected holy water exploding in its snarling, toothy face.

Severus felt a split-second feeling of grim satisfaction as he leapt over the creature and sped down the path.

.x.

'There are many ways to create holy water, often depending on what religion the practitioner is drawing from. Holy water of the Christian faith is not like holy water of pagan faith.

Within some sections of pagan spirituality, holy water is blessed by the Goddess, and most often during the full moon. Water thus blessed is charged with energy of the moon (the power often depends on the phase if it is neither full nor new, or if it is a blue moon) is a symbol of purity and is used to bless, cleanse, and empower, among other things.

Water near sites of Power (see page 82) is more often than not naturally blessed from its proximity to the site. Samples of such empowered water are expensive, often due to the extreme charge within the water and its rarity. Some practitioners of the old ways are known to carry small glass containers which hold such water for protection or spiritual insight.'

Taken from _Chapter Seven: Tools of Empowerment_, "The Old Ways" by Cassandra Serenget, published 1892.

.x.

Bellatrix was walking. Every now and then she'd reach out and break a twig off a small tree, crumbling it between her own brittle fingers, just to have something to do. She knew that if she turned around, she would see it. So she didn't.


	9. Lash

**Apologies for not updating sooner. Was in Mexico, aha ha.**

Lash

Bellatrix wove her fingers together, gritting her teeth, her eyes drawing shut. The words of power flared in her head. The wand in her belt remained untouched; wands were for fighting wizards, or for creature whose defensive charms she knew.

This was not an animal. This was living, breathing, and intelligent. It kept to her steps with ease, no matter how difficult the terrain. Her fingers tightened around each other. Her palms were sweaty from more than the heat of the sun, which had not moved an inch in the sky since she had been in the clearing with the treacherous pond.

She kept to the path after awhile, preferring it to the dark mugginess of the deep forest. She liked the sunlight, even if it was unnatural. Bella had always loved the sun.

Her molars ground against each other, slipping and sliding to the side, sending grating vibrations into her skull. Concentrate. Don't turn around. Concentrate.

Voldemort's hands - beautiful, pianist hands, which could alternately strangle you or perform Mozart - motioning gracefully in the air. _Anaad_, he had said. The very word caused the air to simmer a little, like waves of heat in the desert. _Anaad, Bellatrix_, he had said, tracing an outline of the mark in the air. _Fire_.

It had been so long since she had delved into her own head, to wake up the old things that Voldemort had put there long ago. He had told her she had so much potential to be something _great_; awe-inspiring, earth-shattering. _You are made_, he said, _of the old ways_.

Anaad was fire. Bilisia was anger. Gustus was breath.

Bellatrix wove the marks together in her head just as she wove her fingers together, twining and lacing and gripping. Then she turned on her heel, facing her stalker, and threw her locked hands forward, her mouth opening to let out a long, nearly soundless shriek as the fire raced out of her throat and heart and eyes and down her fingertips.

.x.

Severus ran even though the breath was tearing painfully down and throughout his throat and the skirts of his robes clung wetly to his legs. And, as he ran, he became aware of how close he was to the oak tree.

The tree was obviously a site of Power, for the spring water had been powerful, just as he had hoped. Not only that, but Severus could already feel it in his mind, as if he were a blind man making his way sightlessly through a house he had lived in long ago.

As he ran, ignoring the sounds of pursuit at his back, he drew his knife across the palm of his left hand, slicing the skin apart in one quick motion. Ceremonies always called for blood - it was basic knowledge, one that Severus had acquired as a child. Bindings, banishings, blessings - all required blood as the sacrifice… and breathe, and sweat. Magic was deeper than they taught it at Hogwarts. But the deeper the magic went, the Darker it tended to be labelled.

Tree branches whipped at him as he ran, not daring to stop, no matter how his muscles screamed or his feet ached or his lungs blazed. He had to get there. He would think of what to do after.

There was a warmth in the air, a beautiful golden warmth that seemed to soothe Severus, and energize him. He was getting closer, he knew it, as the greenery whipped past and the screech of his hunters faded in the rush of blood in his head, he was getting closer, _he was nearly there_…

He was there.

He stumbled along the mossy ground, flung himself against the tree, drawing in ragged breaths of air. He slapped his palm against the trunk, feeling the roughness of the bark on his open wound, the blood trickling down the soft inside of his wrist and into the wrinkles in the wood.

He wanted to break the binding, he wanted to be safe, he wanted Regulus so dearly… that that was what he got.

And then something very odd happened.

.x.

Bellatrix blacked out.

.x.

Severus didn't know how to describe it, so didn't bother. He had gone as far as comparing it to a silent explosion where nothing exploded at all, except for his head, before giving up.

Besides that, there was Regulus to think about.

Regulus had always been a very beautiful boy - it seemed that if you were a Black, you were beautiful by default. In fact, you were more than beautiful… you were beauty in its highest form, the lovechild of the minds of Michelangelo and da Vinci.

And he hadn't aged a single day from his tender nineteen, ever since his apparent death. His soft black hair hung in his eyes, which were warm and the dark, dark brown of strong chocolate, and he looked as young and unsure as he always had when faced with difficult situations. He clutched his robes to himself - the robes of a fully-fledged Death Eater, which looked out-of-place on him - looking confused and surprised, though mostly surprised.

Severus had expected this. It had been several decades since they had last seen each other, after all. Severus didn't exactly look as young as he used to.

Severus' black eyes drew away from Regulus' pale, aristocratic face to their surroundings. Stepping stones set deeply into the mossy ground glowed faintly with the etchings of old magic, and beyond them, in the darkness of the trees, the creatures waited. Severus could see them with his magical sight, but he knew Regulus couldn't. He also knew Regulus probably wanted to draw closer for comfort, but dared not to.

The stars were sharp and cold overhead.

"Severus," Regulus ventured softly, after a moment. "Why are you all wet?"

.x.

Bellatrix came to with a face full of grass, the lush green of it filling her mouth and nostrils and mind. Hesitantly, she got to her hands and knees, looking around for her pursuer, then felt a rush of dizziness and immediately passed out again.

.x.

Far away, Nymphadora Tonks quietly let herself into her godfather's house.

She would have been an unusual appearance in the neighbourhood, which was old and wealthy and stately, if it weren't for the fact she was around quite often during the summer. Her hair shone a bright, tropical orange and pink in the sun, and the chains at her hip jangled as she walked.

She placed the key back in her pocket, and closed the door behind her. If she paid attention she could feel the wards in the door weaving themselves back together after having admitted her, prepared to block anyone who was not allowed within. Severus had always been a very careful person when it came to his house - nothing could get in without his blessing.

Tonks had that blessing, of course.

She noticed it, almost right away - the faint, lingering presence of a woman. It made her feel faintly uncomfortable. Sure, Severus had always had his share of women - it was surprising how charming he could be, and how attractive he could appear to the right kind of girl. Tonks had often walked right into the house to find someone roughly her age, sporting dyed jet-black hair or several nose rings or something of the sort, sitting at the kitchen table drinking a beer. Sometimes there would be bright conversation, but most of the time the current girlfriend would just snap, 'Who the fuck are _you_?'

But this was a different kind of woman, a different kind of presence. This was _familiar_. Tonks stopped in the middle of the living room, trying to soak it in. Old, faintly familiar. So very, very faint and familiar.

Her mother, Andromeda, had always said, 'My sister… would always leave a kind of… stamp… in the room. Not of herself, but how she felt.' A pause. 'She was so emotional.'

Tonks remembered being very, very little, and she remembered seeing her aunt's thoughtful face - pale and sharp and lovely, so like her sister's, but so unlike her as well. 'She's an alright kid,' Bella had admitted. Tonks could remember something in the air that time; a sadness, an ache, but a joy. She had always remembered it; somehow it was more important than the words exchanged.

'Thanks, Bella,' Andromeda had responded, dry as ever. That was the last time Andromeda had seen Bella, before Regulus had died.

Andromeda had refused to attend the funeral.

Bellatrix had been here.

Tonks knew it with unsettling certainty. And it would explain a lot - Severus' sudden absence, mainly. Tonks hurried to the kitchen and found, upon the table, a piece of paper.

'GONE' it spelt out in scratchy pencil.

"Why thank you," Tonks said, crumbling it up and lobbing it at the wall. "That helped loads."

She glanced about her with some helplessness. Severus was known to up and leave at times, but not without at least calling Tonks first to make sure the goldfish were fed.

Christ, the fish.

She immediately rushed back to the living room to feed them, and spent five minutes watching them dart about, happily feasting. Severus was not exactly a pet person, but he liked goldfish since they didn't talk back. Besides, they were easier to take care of than, say, the dog, who was still romping about at Narcissa Malfoy's.

The place still smelt of Bellatrix. It had to be Bellatrix. Tonks scratched worriedly at one of the studs in her eyebrow. Bellatrix had done something to Severus and now they were both gone.

The phone started to ring.


End file.
